Whistleberries Stirabout Depression Cake : Food Customs and Concoctions of the Frontier West Book

Wring that cow's tail and shove her this way! Or you could just say 'Pass the grease!' After all , you might need some butter for your steaming 'stack of hots' or 'string of flats.' Filling your belly in the frontier West was more diverse and entertaining than you might ever imagine. Federal Writers' Project field workers, under the direction of the Works Projects Administration (WPA), collected anecdotes and history surrounding the food customs and concoctions of Americans. Written in the late 1930s, the manuscript for the western section of the country abounds with tales of miners, lumberjacks, ranch housewives, range dwellers, and stories of whole communities eating, drinking, and wisecracking. Present, of course, are the old standbys of sourdough and son-of-a-gun stew, but you will also discover the open-range staple of Dutch oven-cooked whistleberries--salty cowboy slang for beans; the Irish miners' sweet, warming, filling stirabout served in boardinghouses and lunch pails throughtout mining districts; and depression cake--an unidentified eggless, butterless, milkless, bubbling, frothing, volcanic mass turned delicious cake out of Depression-era necessity. Equally mysterious are fun-loving chicherees, thirst-quenching Sean O'Farrels, satisfying and tempting boxty, oaten cakes, saffron buns, 'a letter from 'ome,' and much more. This book tells the story of food and eating in the frontier West. Includes a contemporary foreward by food writer and cookbook author Greg Patent and a selection of favorite specialty recipes from each state.